


an experiment

by marzipan (orphan_account)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, supernormal au ficlet thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 18:08:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14939261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/marzipan
Summary: Jim makes a bargain with Mycroft for a distraction. The experiment fails.





	an experiment

He sticks the barrel of the gun up his mouth and pulls the trigger and blowing your brains out on this specific plane of reality is, frankly, exactly as he expected.

It’s garish, for one.

Gunpowder and heat tears through that beautiful, yet-already-damaged mind of his, turning a million and one thoughts in progress into broken shards, a right red mess on the concrete.

It’s both instantaneous and unending, for another. 

Jim Moriarty stares, unblinking, unseeing into the great big nothing, and here is where the expected ends and a different kind of existentialism creeps in. He feels lost, waiting, at a crossroads. 

After what feels like three eternities, his vision finally clears, and the ghastly apparition he knew was coming finally appears.

The sun comes out, a bit. He blinks his eye rapidly against the sudden onslaught of light, of vision, trying to adjust. 

Jim is back on the roof, though he knows he really isn’t. It only looks and feels like he is lying flat on his back, hair sticky and wet with blood, missing whole chunks of his mind. Jim is not alone.

The ghastly apparition solidifies, a bit, and he hears the sound of footfalls on the concrete, approaching. Between the edge of the building (the  _“building”_ ) the black mass of sentient smoke and earthly terrors takes on the form of a rather tall, middle-aged human male. Jim cracks an eye open. He once called himself Mycroft Holmes.

The man, not really a man, folds his hands over the tall umbrella he’s leaning on like a cane and sighs, looking over the side of the building.

“Clever Jim Moriarty, you gave him the perfect out, yet he didn’t take it.”

Jim doesn’t have anything to say to that. It almost looks like Mycroft is sad for him, for  _him_ , for a moment, but Jim doesn’t believe it, doesn’t believe he’s capable of it. And surely enough, the moment passes, and Mycroft’s expression turns somber. 

“I did everything I said, Jim,” he says. “I cultivated the perfect diversion; filled him with fire-fueled curiosity and an eccentricity that kept others as bay, keeping him ostracized so as to not become ordinary, nurtured his need to tug apart every loose stitch and unravel it to its end.”

“You had yourself a wonderful, mad playmate, every bit the dramatist as he was the character, matching you move for move on opposite sides of the board. You should have been doomed to mirror each other forever, had you not seen the most perfect positions from which to call the game. I suppose you had the advantage of the big picture, then, where he did not.”

Jim bites his lip, staving off a pout, hoping, really, to quell the burst of rage at his failed experiment.

“And still he refused your gift.”

Jim’s teeth digs into his lip. He’s quiet. 

Mycroft clears his throat. “I’ve done my part, to the letter. And now. Now we’re done here.”

He waits another beat, and Jim grumbles but pulls himself to his feet nonetheless. As slowly as he can manage.

“Come along now,” Mycroft says. “It’s time for you to fulfill your end of the bargain.”


End file.
